I "Fully Understand" that Joe Biden is an embarrassment and an idiot

Perhaps the worst Vice President in my lifetime. Such a poor representative for our country.

The odds of him remaining on the Obama ticket (assuming Obama runs) keep getting lower and lower.

Mr. Vice President, Can You Second-Guess Yourself on UNFPA Funding Now? August 24, 2011 2:45 P.M. By Reggie Littlejohn Blasted with criticism, Vice President Biden is trying to take back what he said in Sichuan, China: that he “fully understands” China’s one-child policy, but is “not second-guessing” it. Chastened, Biden now says that China’s coercive population-control program is “repugnant.” Indeed, his spokeswoman insists that the entire “Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization.” Words spoken before the world in an official capacity cannot be unspoken. The bell, once rung, cannot be un-rung. However, the Obama administration now has publicly admitted it knows that China practices forced abortion and sterilization. This is progress. Should we believe that this administration “strongly opposes” these practices? If the Obama administration “strongly opposes” forced abortion in China, then why did they restore funding to UNFPA (United Nations Family Planning Fund), an operative “abortion provider” in China? In 2001, the U.S. cut funding to UNFPA because an investigation, headed by then–Secretary of State Colin Powell, found that UNFPA was complicit in the coercive implementation of China’s one-child policy. In 2008, the U.S. State Department reaffirmed that determination, and yet the Obama administration resumed funding in 2009. President Obama’s FY 2012 budget requests $47 million for UNFPA. The current administration also funds the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The IPPF works hand in hand with the coercive Chinese Communist population-control machine. Their website declares, “The China Family Planning Association (CFPA) plays a very important role in China’s family planning programme. It supports the present family planning policy of the government . . .” Funding UNFPA and IPPF is not “strong opposition” to coercive family planning. It is support. At issue are the true aims behind the actions of the Obama administration. Are they “pro-choice,” as they say, or is their real aim population control, even if coercive? Earlier this year, U.S. citizens voted to cut UNFPA funding under the new YOUCUT program. Because of this vote, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R., N.C.) will introduce legislation to cut UNFPA, saving $400 million over the next ten years. If the Obama administration is sincere in saying it “strongly opposes . . . forced abortion and sterilization,” then it will either insist that UNFPA and IPPF cease operation in China, or it will defund these organizations. — Reggie Littlejohn is president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.

Mr. Vice President, Be a Leader August 24, 2011 3:12 P.M. By Kathryn Jean Lopez Also grateful that a spokesman for Joe Biden says he is opposed to forced abortion, former Tiananmen Square democracy activist Chai Ling calls the Chinese one-child policy “an ongoing Tiananmen massacre every hour.” In response to the Biden clarification, she writes, as president of All Girls Allowed: Where are the political left in this modern-day freedom movement? Forced abortions and mass gendercide certainly call for action from both sides of the aisle. The challenge: End the cruel One-Child Policy. The Obama Administration has yet to issue a clear call to end the Policy, which is harmful both to the Chinese and American people. The political right is exposing the injustice, calling on leaders, and pushing a new bill to act on China’s repugnant policy. The ”China Democracy Promotion Act of 2011” (H.R.2121), would give the President authority to deny entry into the U.S. of Chinese officials and individuals who participate in human rights abuses, including China’s coercive birth limitation policy. The political left has been conspicuously silent. Democrats, we know you also stand for justice. We know that you love freedom, that you are willing to put aside differences and work alongside others to protect the oppressed. We know that you believe women deserve a choice when it comes to their own bodies. Where are you in this movement? Will you stand alongside your fellow Americans to call for an end to the One-Child Policy?

‘The White House has checked a political box on this side of the Pacific’ August 24, 2011 4:00 P.M. By Kathryn Jean Lopez And John Boehner urges White House action to go along with a vice presidential aide’s talk. The Speaker of the House actually raised the issue of human-rights abuse with Chinese President Hu Jintao when the Chinese president was in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. Meanwhile neither the president nor vice president has taken leadership on the matter — when Hu Jintao was here and when Biden was in China this weekend. To the contrary, as Chai Lingand Reggie Littlejohn have pointed out. Boehner writes: If the Obama Administration truly opposes the one-child policy and truly cares about undoing the damage the Vice President’s comments have caused, the Vice President himself – or his boss, the President of the United States – should personally go on record immediately and unequivocally right the wrong. Secondly, if the Obama administration is serious about its opposition to the one-child policy, the President should immediately halt U.S. contributions to the U.N. Population Fund, which has been linked in China to the one-child policy. President George W. Bush stopped U.S. contributions to the UNFPA in 2002, but they were resumed by President Obama when he took office in 2009, on the grounds that the fund doesn’t “directly” support abortion. Until these two basic actions have been taken, the effect of the Biden incident is that the perpetrators of the one-child policy – the people with the power and authority to reverse it, and end the forced sterilizations and coercive abortions the policy has spawned – have been given further reason to believe that the United States government does not object to the one-child policy and doesn’t mind if it continues. They have been left with the impression that while some American leaders strenuously object to the policy – such as Speaker Boehner, who raised concerns about the one-child policy directly to Chinese President Hu Jintao in a meeting earlier this year – there are other American leaders, including the Vice President and President of the United States, who are willing to offer a wink and a nod, and let the Chinese government simply carry on with its reprehensible business.

President Downgrade's Excellent Vacation w/ Millionaires & Billionaires Begins

While our Economy, the Stock Market, Europe, the Middle East, and his Presidency are all in free fall.

Don't worry, there is golf to be played on the Vineyard, and after all, none of what's going wrong is his fault ! It's all just "Bad Luck" & Republicans (and of couse, GWB)

Hah !

Here are some good reads that explain it all:

Mark Steyn, as always, is a must read:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/275101/imperial-presidency-mark-steyn

So is Charles Krauthammer:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274999/bad-luck-bad-faith-charles-krauthammer

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/274963/incredible-inconsistency-obamas-foreign-policy-mario-loyola

And lst's throw in a little Warren Buffett for good measure:

Koch Responds to Buffett’s Call for Tax Hikes

August 19, 2011 4:58 P.M.

By Daniel Foster

I’ve received the following statement from Charles G. Koch in response to Warren Buffett’sNew York Times op-ed, which called on government to “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich.” To my knowledge, you’re reading it here first:

“Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good; this is particularly true over the past several years with the massive uncontrolled increase in government spending. I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington. — Charles G. Koch, Chairman and CEO, Koch Industries, Inc.

I would only add, as others already have, that if Buffett and his “mega-rich” friends don’t think private philanthropy will do as much good as public spending, they are free to send as much money to the Treasury as they like.

President Downgrade & The Stock Market Crash

Heckuva Job, Barack Obama ! The USA's AAA credit rating is downgraded on your big government high spending watch (its not all your fault, but you played a big, big part).

While you golf, go to fundraisers, throw parties for yourself (Big 5-0 must be celebrated) and prepare to take the rest of the month off on the Vineyard, here's what you've been up to.

- Debt Ceiling standoff -- hold economy hostage to demands for more taxes on people who pay them (you cave), threaten us with "better get this done b4 the Asian markets open"; offer no plan of your own.

This followed up with:

A Stock Market CRASH. Which didn't happen on your "better get this done b4 the Asian markets open", but since you did plant the seed, it happened immediately after an agreement with Congress was reached.

And what did you do about the CRASH and DOWNGRADE ? Well, nothing, except, give another lame speech while blaming everyone else, including:

The TEA PARTY

Millionaires and Billionaires

Corporate Jet Owners

The Rich

Congress

The Republicans

Japan Earthquake

Arab Uprisings

S&P

Did I miss anyone ?

I don't think I am the only one who sees Obama's failures as a President and as a Leader, who offers nothing more than the same old tired, failed ideas (tax the rich, build roads) while blaming everyone for whatever has gone wrong with his agenda.

Here are a few other commentaries on President Downgrade.

Michael Walsh: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/274113/theres-no-there-there-michael-walsh

James Capretta: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/274142/downgrade-rebuke-obama-richly-deserved-james-c-capretta

John Podhoretz: Rhetorical Whiz Fails To Make The Grade

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/what_rhetorical_whiz_fails_to_make_ibAdrJr559ziiRXQehpBmL

THERE'S NO THERE, THERE: Michael Walsh

My New York Post column today examines President Obama’s sad, wan, pathetic speech yesterday. For a hoops-obsessed president who once boasted that he had “game,” there’s really nothing left for Obama at this point. All he ever had was the ability to read the teleprompter, but now even that Wizard of Oz parlor trick has failed him.

With the left starting to edge away and even the compliant national media finally noticing that he’s the Oakland of national politics, it’s the beginning of the end of the Obama presidency:

So much for any hope that Obama would give us something besides his class-warfare, redistributionist ways — which have brought us soaring debt, high unemployment, a falling dollar and the humiliation of S&P’s downgrade of the nation’s credit.

Even as President Downgrade spoke, the stock market continued to crater, losing more than 600 points and signaling a continuing vote of no confidence in the administration’s economic policies.

But, then, where would he get a new approach? He’s been abandoned by every one of his main economic advisers except hapless Treasury Secretary/punching bag Timothy Geithner. So don’t go looking for him to make good anytime soon on his airy promise to have some concrete “ideas” for the special congressional debt-reduction committee.

Instead, he persists in continuing to advocate the same ruinous policies.

It’s bad enough that he can’t deal with the big picture. But even his small-ball “policy positions” are dead wrong:

Yesterday, for example, he called for an extension of the so-called “payroll-tax cut” — which sounds good until you actually think about it.

For the “payroll tax” (as Democrats have taken to calling it) is in this case merely another name for Social Security taxes. And Social Security is set to go completely bust within 25 years or so and is “not sustainable under currently scheduled financing,” according to its own trustees — so reducing receipts hardly seems like a good idea, even if the Social Security system gets “credited” with an amount equal to the tax cut to go into its imaginary lockbox.

Why this madness? It’s not enough that the rich must be forced to pay their “fair share” — although the top 20 percent of filers already pays 70 percent of federal income taxes. Having managed to create an income-tax system in which fully half of the “taxpayers” pay no tax at all, the left is now trying to decouple the failing entitlement from its taxpayer base as well — and no matter that such fiscal follies are what produced the S&P downgrade.

An even worse idea is extending unemployment benefits. Many employers are now telling job-seekers who’ve been unemployed for more than six months to not bother coming in for the interview — the folks getting the jobs are those who already have jobs or who’ve been laid off for only a few months. In other words, extending benefits reduces the chances the “beneficiary” will ever find work again. Is that what we want?

By now it’s clear to all but the bitter-clinger dead-enders that Obama is in way over his head. Yet still they flail about, pointing fingers in all directions while the president dances the night away in the White House or swans off to Martha’s Vineyard. Who’s kidding whom?

“No matter what some agency may say, we have always been and always will be a AAA country,” Obama said. Too bad we don’t have a AAA president.

Debt Ceiling Crap Sandwich Passes House - Senate, Prez next

Do I really need to add my voice to the noisy din of the last few weeks .... Nah ...

What a mess ...

Here are some links that might be of interest:

John Bolton: Defense and the debt ceiling.

WSJ Editors: The debt deal is a rare bipartisan victory for the forces of smaller government.

Marc Thiessen: How the Tea Party ‘hobbits’ won the debt fight.

Andrew Malcolm: More bad poll news for Obama as debt deal brings smiles to Capitol Hill.

Paul Krugman: The president surrenders.

Ross Douthat: The diminished president.

NYT Editors: Democrats won almost nothing they wanted except avoiding default.

Carson Holloway: The Debt Ceiling and the Constitution.

Michael A. Walsh: Floundering Obama aims for ‘12 miracle.

John E. Sununu: Heroes, sidekicks do what Obama can’t.

Stephen Meister: How to avoid next debt-limit mess.

Fouad Ajami: Barack Obama the pessimist.

Robert Dallek: Even a deal on the debt ceiling will not cover up the fundamental crisis at the heart of American politics.

John Podhoretz: Satan sandwiches and House Democrats.

Lee Edwards: Reagan would approve of today's GOP.

Promises, Promises, oh the Promises of Spending Cuts

Promises, Promises July 21, 2011 3:33 P.M. By J. D. Foster When is a spending cut a spending cut? When the cut is in law. Everything else is just a promise. When discretionary spending totals are cut immediately, that’s a spending cut. Such cuts are demonstrably not “pie in the sky,” so it’s fine to tally the effects over the next ten years. Similarly, when entitlement programs are altered in law, that’s a spending cut. Again, it’s perfectly appropriate to add up the resultant budgetary ramifications for a reasonable period to give some context for budgeteers. But even statutory spending caps, necessary and beneficial though they would be, are ultimately only promises to cut spending, unless they are backed by inescapable, automatic cuts if the caps are breached. Just about everything else is only a promise, and Washington breaks promises with breathtaking regularity. Congress has been hashing out a debt-ceiling increase since the start of the year. The House has acted by passing the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. The Senate, which to date has not even passed a budget for next year, has yet to pass anything on the debt ceiling. Yet somehow it is the Republicans who are “terrorists” threatening financial terrorism, in the words of former Obama adviser Larry Summers. On the table in the Senate at the moment are two vacuous proposals, full of promises but devoid of certainty. First there’s the McConnell-Reid proposal, which does not even promise spending cuts but only infers them. Then there’s the Gang of Six quasi-plan. It’s not really a plan because, despite months of work, the plan has so few details one cannot even reliably guess at the net tax hike it would impose. The Gang certainly can’t tell you. Moreover, according to one of its authors, Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), they have no legislative language. Apparently, then, the real plan is to raise the debt ceiling and promise to take up the Gang’s plan whenever it’s ready. And what is that promised plan? To enact legislation that would promise to tell certain congressional committees to look for more budgetary savings. And the committees would, by implication, promise to comply — a promise of a promise of a promise. For anyone who is serious about the soaring deficits and the threat they pose to the nation’s future, the best possible response was offered by the great Dionne Warwick: Promises, promises, I’m all through with promises, promises now, I don’t know how I got the nerve to walk out, If I shout, remember, I feel free, Now I can look at myself and be proud, I’m laughing out loud. Enjoy, and take heart. — J. D. Foster is the Heritage Foundation’s Norman B. Ture senior fellow in the economics of fiscal policy.

Politicans dither while Missing the Boat on the National Debt

This piece is a must read:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/272407/missing-debt-yuval-levin

Obama the Ideologue

Good column by Jonah Goldberg ... worth reading.

Stating the obvious (to all but the media) that Obama is the ideologue here...

http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2011/07/20/the_ideologue_in_the_oval_office